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The future of astronomy
Black-sky thinking
Aug 13th 2009 | RIO DE JANEIRO
From The Economist print edition
The first of four articles from the International Astronomical Union meeting looks at a battle
between Big Science and human hunches
NASA-STScl
SINCE time immemorial man has looked at the stars in awe and wonderment. No longer. The
observatories where light is collected are now run by robots that neither dirty the instruments nor take
night-time naps. Does it matter? Some of the astronomers at this year’s meeting of the International
Astronomical Union (IAU), held in Rio de Janeiro from August 3rd to 14th, think it does. They discussed
what could be done to halt their subject’s trend towards mining data gathered by computers rather than
peering into telescopes.
The Rio meeting is the high point of what has been dubbed by the union as the International Year of
Astronomy. The reason for picking 2009 to receive this honour is that it is exactly 400 years since Galileo
Galilei turned his telescope on the heavens to study what the naked eye could not disclose, and also since
Johannes Kepler revealed to the world that planetary orbits are ellipses, not circles. These two events can
be seen, in retrospect, as the beginning of modern astronomy.
The pace of discovery has not slowed down. Indeed, more than one participant in the meeting described
the present as a “golden age”. The rate of discoveries has been increasing, along with the means to keep
up with the details. That has, in turn, led to bigger and more expensive telescopes, and the introduction of
management techniques intended to ensure the smooth running of large projects. But it is that
managerialism that is beginning to worry some of the more thoughtful members of the union. They fear
that although it brings short-term benefits, it may, in the long run, crush individual flair.
Simon White of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, is one such worrier. He
observes that in the 19th century and for most of the 20th, too, scientific progress usually came from
brilliant individuals formulating and testing hypotheses using data accumulated by relatively modest
means.
Big science has its place, of course. For one thing, enormous amounts of data allow subtle effects to be
detected statistically. But Dr White suggests astronomers should ensure small science can flourish
alongside its larger counterpart by, for example, ensuring that telescopes designed to look for big fish can
also be used for projects that might be considered as small fry.
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